


And Freedom's A Fairy Tale Lie

by Haberdasher



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Archivist Jonathan Sims, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Distortion Avatar Martin Blackwood, Episode: e101 Another Twist (The Magnus Archives), Episode: e115 Taking Stock (The Magnus Archives), Hamilton References, It/Its Pronouns for Michael Distortion, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Near Death, POV Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Spiral Avatar Martin Blackwood, Suicidal Thoughts, Tim Stoker Lives (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24691534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: When Michael is transformed just before killing Jon, the face the Distortion next wears is one much more familiar to Jon than that of Helen Richardson.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 94
Kudos: 225





	1. Chapter 1

Jon had never known that he was about to die before.

He’d suspected it a few times before, true. He’d been afraid for his life during Prentiss’ attack on the archives, had thought the not-Sasha thing might well kill him and take his place, had known all too well that Daisy’s threats directed towards him were far from idle.

But Jon hadn’t _known_ , then, hadn’t held that same deep certainty he felt now about the end of his life rapidly approaching. Even back then, he had seen that there was the potential for him to live on, that it was possible he could survive the threat currently endangering him and live to be threatened another day. He hadn’t guessed the details of how he’d gotten out of each situation, admittedly, but he’d known that such outcomes were at least plausible ones.

Jon didn’t see any such outcomes here. The options were clear enough: die by Michael’s hand, or die by Nikola’s. No third option. No way out.

And Michael had promised that dying by its hand would be far more pleasant than the alternative. Not that Jon _trusted_ Michael--he knew better than that, knew better than to trust a creature that had just proclaimed itself “the throat of delusion incarnate”--but... what was the alternative, really? Wait for Nikola to skin him alive, for his remains to be used to help bring about the end of the world? Even if that promise was a trick on Michael’s behalf, Jon rather doubted it could do much worse than _that_.

“Open it. Open it, and all this will be over.”

“All this,” presumably, meaning Jon’s life... but also possibly the apocalypse? Without the old skin Gertrude had kept somewhere beyond his reach, and without _his_ skin (a thought that still gave Jon goosebumps, despite or perhaps because of how the concept of someone else removing and wearing his skin had become more and more normalized during the course of his kidnapping, going from a preposterous idea to a very likely fate in the not-too-distant future), could the Unknowing still go on?

Perhaps not. Perhaps if he gave in, it would save the world. Perhaps his death would be for a noble cause.

Or perhaps his death was simply an inevitability come to pass.

Either way, Jon didn’t hesitate, reaching out and grabbing the doorknob in front of him as if his life depended upon it, though he knew well enough that in fact the exact opposite was true.

But when Jon tried to turn the doorknob, it remained stationary, the sound of a lock preventing its movement clearly audible.

Jon looked over to Michael, trying to discern whether this was just another of its tricks, but to no avail. “Er, it’s...”

Jon tried the door twice more in rapid succession--perhaps Michael had only locked it for a moment, perhaps it simply wanted to further prolong his terror before consuming him--but the door remained locked each time he tried it.

“What?” Michael said.

“It’s locked.”

“It’s not.” Michael laughed at that, a strange snort of a laugh; Jon had heard Michael Shelley’s laugh, now, and Michael’s laugh was not the same. There was some surface similarity between the two, perhaps, but it was, well, it was _distorted_ , transformed almost beyond recognition.

Jon considered trying the door again, but decided against it, letting his arms fall back to his sides instead; if Michael was trying to play some sort of mind game with him here, he wasn’t terribly inclined to play along.

“Why is it locked?”

“It _can’t_ be!”

Jon couldn’t help but think how many things in his life were things that most people would say _couldn’t be_ , how what could and could not be had long since proven to be a slippery slope.

Jon was quickly losing his patience as he had lost so much else recently, and rather than continuing to try the locked door fruitlessly, he threw his hands in the air and yelled, “Well, _you_ try it!”

The words came out harsh, even to Jon’s own ears, but he didn’t have it in him to regret it. After all, what else did he have left to lose?

Jon wasn’t sure what he expected as a response, but he hadn’t really been expecting Michael to actually take him up on the request, to stroll over and wrap its impossibly large and sharp hands around the doorknob, and yet he watched as Michael did just that.

Jon certainly hadn’t expected the door to stay every bit as locked when Michael tried to open it as it had been for him. Judging by the expression on its face, neither had Michael.

Michael tried the door again and again, laughing shakily as it remained as steadfastly locked as ever no matter how forcefully and frantically it grabbed the doorknob.

“Th-Tha-That-That’s… not-”

It was hard to read the expression on Michael’s face at first, perhaps unsurprising for a creature that was more eldritch fear monster than man, but as Jon continued to watch its futile attempts at opening the door, he took in the furrow of its brows and the widening of its eyes...

Was that fear he saw on Michael’s face? Jon wouldn’t have thought Michael capable of such a thing, and yet...

“Oh.” Michael’s voice was almost calm in its resignation, but its shaking hands, letting go of the doorknob after one final fruitless jiggle, betrayed its true feelings clearly enough. “Oh no.”

And then Michael began to scream.

Jon had never heard anything quite like it. It was a scream human enough to chill Jon to the bone, yet still recognizably inhuman, with all the echoing and distortion that Jon had come to associate with Michael and its particular brand of fear. It was more human-sounding than Prentiss’ death screech, certainly, but similar enough that Jon would have recognized it for what it was even without watching Michael writhing before his eyes, its form warping and glitching in impossible ways before disappearing from view entirely.

As the screaming ended and Michael vanished, the door that it had tried so desperately to unlock creaked open.

Except, when Jon looked more closely, it wasn’t the same door as before. He hadn’t seen it change, had been watching Michael much more closely than the door, but while the door was still yellow, it was a different shade of yellow now, a soft and muted goldenrod. The doorknob was different, too, bronze instead of black, with carved details that looked oddly old-fashioned, though trying to look too closely at the carvings just gave Jon a headache.

Then Jon looked past the door itself to the one standing in the doorway, the one who had opened it, and he could swear his heart skipped a beat as his brain raced to put together the pieces.

It was Martin.

Martin, who nobody had seen since before Leitner was murdered. Martin, who almost everybody had written off as dead or worse by now, especially after hearing Tim’s story of their separation in Michael’s corridors. Martin, who Jon had thought he would never see again...

Except... except it wasn’t _quite_ Martin, was it? It resembled Martin, as Michael likely had resembled the late Michael Shelley, but while the overall image was more or less intact, some of the details were grossly off. Martin had always been taller than Jon, but now he was a giant, taller than any human could ever grow to be, with hands eerily similar to the huge, pointed hands of Michael, albeit covered with Martin’s freckles...

Jon was still trying to process all of this, staring silently at Martin-not-Martin, when he heard “D’you want to come in?”

And it sounded like Martin’s voice, too, it really did, which didn’t help matters any...

“Wh... M- _Martin_? But... but y- Michael...” Jon could tell well enough how incoherent his attempts at speech were, was mentally berating himself for not managing to sound more put-together... but to be fair, he had just been convinced he was about to die, still wasn’t sure that that _wasn’t_ about to happen, and was now staring at somebody he thought he’d never see again, except that it wasn’t actually him, just a monster wearing him like a costume, or, or something along those lines... so sue him if this wasn’t his finest hour when it came to conversation.

Martin (or the thing that looked like Martin) didn’t seem to have the same difficulty, though, shaking his (its?) head gently before saying, voice steady and calm, “Michael isn’t me. Not now.”

“What happened?” The question, at least, flowed out naturally enough, as did Martin’s response to it.

“He got... distracted. Let feelings that shouldn’t have been his overwhelm me. Lost my way.”

That was... tricky for Jon to wrap his head around, especially given the seemingly-arbitrary change in pronouns halfway through, but then again, what else was new?

“And now? Y- _you’re_ Martin?”

Martin bit his lip in a way Jon knew well, the way Martin always did when he was trying to concentrate on something, except it didn’t look quite right. Martin’s teeth poking out from under his lips looked... what was it about them that made them look so off? Were they bigger than before? Sharper? Whiter? His teeth were _different_ , at any rate. They were _wrong_.

“I don’t know. I never know, not really. ...do I need a name?”

“...no, I, I suppose not.”

Martin paused for a moment before adding, “Martin is... better than Michael.”

“But he’s gone.” It wasn’t a question, not really. Jon had known for some time now that Martin was gone, one way or another, and this new wrinkle didn’t change that, really, only complicated it. Whoever or whatever the creature standing in front of him now was, it wasn’t the Martin Blackwood he knew so well.

“Yes. As is Michael. There’s only me.” A wry smile made its way onto Martin’s face there as he spoke, the tone oddly reminiscent of the sort one might use to explain things to a preschooler.

“I...”

Jon wanted to know more, wanted details, wanted explanations, but he had a feeling that no matter what questions he managed to come up with, all he would be left with were responses that inspired even more questions in turn, a never-ending cycle of uncertainty and confusion. Maybe he would never fully understand this, but all he could do was try to accept that lack of understanding. It was better than trying to fight it, at any rate.

“Okay.”

Martin looked pointedly over at the door, then back at Jon before asking, “Do you still want to leave here?”

Jon let out a soft, humorless laugh. “A-are you still going to kill me?”

“No!” The response was swift and certain, and Martin’s face looked almost... offended? Silly, really, that, it was a fair enough question given the circumstances... “That was Michael’s desire, not mine.”

“So... s-so what _do_ you want?”

Martin cupped his chin in one hand, which just served to highlight to Jon exactly how disproportionately large his hands now were, how unnatural that once-familiar gesture now appeared. “I don’t know. Martin liked you... rather a lot, actually...” The laugh that came out of Martin’s mouth was shaky and echoed far more that the room’s acoustics would normally allow, but his face grew red at the same time, and even if Martin’s laugh had an unnatural echo and his fingers were closer to elongated claws now, Jon _knew_ that blush. “...so there’s a lot to consider. But I _will_ help you leave.”

A distant warning bell went off in Jon’s head. Whatever Martin... whatever _it_ looked and acted like now, it was still a monster, still a being whose very existence was tied to distorting reality, to falsehood... and it was still trying to get him to enter its corridors, even if the supposed reason behind it had changed...

“Wait, is this a... Mic- Y-you’re the Distortion, the, the, the Liar. W- How do I know this isn’t a, a trick?”

Jon could tell he still sounded like a stammering, incoherent mess, but in a way, that only strengthened his point in his mind. After all, Martin, or, or whatever it wanted to be called now, wasn’t acting nearly as flustered as Jon was now, despite seemingly having gone through some major changes itself, so either this was a trick or... or “Martin” was being surprisingly unemotional, which didn’t entirely track.

Martin snorted loudly. “And if it _was..._ what would you do about it, exactly?”

The answer, of course, was nothing. Trick or not, Jon had exactly as much power as he’d had before over his situation, which was to say almost none. Trick or not, Jon was faced with the same choice as before: enter the corridors, be they owned by Michael or Martin or a being without true name, or just wait for Nikola to kill him.

And Jon still stood by his previous assessment that whatever this being could do to him, it would still be better than dying by Nikola’s hand and going from trying to prevent the Unknowing to being a part of its completion.

“...right, right...”

A thought occurred to Jon. “How long have I... b-been here? There’s no... It was hard to keep track-”

His voice comes out weaker than he would have liked, the question sounding almost more like a plea, but he doesn’t have much time to consider the implications of that before Martin interrupts him.

“ _Time_ is hard, A-and it’s difficult to follow without a proper mind, especially here. A while.”

“Right.” Jon knew “a while” could mean anywhere from days to years (though he was _fairly_ sure it hadn’t been the latter), but also knew better than to push for a more definite answer.

“The door is open, if, if you’re ready?” Martin shot Jon an awkward, toothy smile, and despite everything Jon couldn’t help but smile back.

“No, not, not really, but...” But when had that ever stopped any of this? When had him not being ready ever made a lick of difference to the rest of the world? Not since he was eight years old, at the very least...

Jon sighed a little, but as Martin shooed him on, he flung open the door and walked into the corridors, willing if not ready to face whatever face awaited him within.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this dialogue seems familiar, it's because it (and the sound effects/description) are all taken from MAG 101: Another Twist, with some of the post-Michael-death bits altered to better fit the AU.


	2. Chapter 2

Jon had never actually been in Michael’s corridors, not really. He’d gone through the door once before, when his options were down to that or facing the thing that was not Sasha head-on, but that time it had just spat him out directly into the tunnels below the Archives, no corridors necessary. Tim had been inside the corridors, from what he’d heard, but he hadn’t exactly been keen to give a statement about it after the fact.

The only actual description Jon had of the corridors was from Helen Richardson, who hadn’t been in the best state of mind when she’d given it, though her statement at least had been lucid enough. According to Helen, the wallpaper was covered with a swirling pattern and had been green at first, the carpet was faded and initially yellow, the rug was thick and black. Those colors had all changed over time, though, and Jon doubted that the exact combination made much of a difference; what mattered, more likely, was the sudden and unexpected change when Helen hadn’t been looking, rather than any actual pattern.

Even with that vague and shifting description as all he had to work with, though, Jon could tell at a glance that the corridors must have changed.

The most obvious difference between Helen’s description and what Jon saw as he stumbled into the corridors was the walls. Helen had described swirling, colorful wallpaper accompanying her every step of the way. These corridors had no wallpaper at all, just walls made of unvarnished wood--Jon couldn’t identify the exact wood in question, but that might just be because he wasn’t especially knowledgeable when it came to wood. There were no tiles, no panels, no dividing lines to separate one patch of wood from the next, just a continuous stretch of the stuff as far as the eye could see from floor to ceiling, all covered in natural-looking knots and whorls.

The carpet was still yellow, but it didn’t look faded in the slightest; it was a bright, vibrant yellow similar enough to the goldenrod of the door he’d just passed through that Jon couldn’t tell at a glance if they were actually the same shade or not. Jon personally thought it looked rather horrid next to the wooden walls, but then, he wasn’t exactly an interior design expert, and besides, maybe the colors clashing horribly was in fact the point. It wouldn’t surprise him, at least, but not much would anymore.

The rug Helen had mentioned was nowhere to be seen.

At least the electric lamps were the same... presumably. Helen hadn’t given them much of a description, but that was probably because they were pretty nondescript to begin with. Just plain white lampshades covering ordinary enough light bulbs, breaking up the scenery ever so slightly and ensuring that the endless corridors remained fairly well-lit, though how the electricity got there to keep them all running was anyone’s guess.

Jon didn’t see Martin enter the corridors, didn’t see the door shut behind him and disappear, didn’t see Martin go from being in back of him to in front. One moment Jon was entering the corridors seemingly alone, and the next Martin, or the thing that looked like Martin, was some ways ahead of him, beckoning.

“Come with me.”

Jon nodded solemnly and did as he was told.

Jon was used to being the fastest walker in a group, but even so it was hard to keep pace with Martin as he strode through the corridors. (Admittedly, Martin had something of an advantage when it came to leg length, especially now, and Jon was somewhat out of practice at the moment, but that didn’t stop Jon from being irked by it.) Martin didn’t slow down as Jon half-ran half-stumbled trying to keep up with him, though he did look back periodically, checking that Jon was still following behind him.

Jon made a point of keeping track every time they did or didn’t make a right-hand turn, though he knew even if he made it out of this in one piece, such information was unlikely to lead to the same result a second time here.

Four turns passed before turning at the fifth. Two paths ignored before taking the third.

The carpet was a soft olive green now.

First turn available taken.

Jon was still far from an expert in identifying types of wood at a glance, but he knew the walls hadn’t been quite so dark before.

Eighth turn taken...

Martin stopped abruptly, and Jon was already slowing to a halt following Martin’s lead before he noticed the reason behind it, saw the door unobtrusively nestled within the endless wall of wood.

“There you are.”

Jon approached the door, but didn’t reach for the handle just yet. “And where does this lead?”

“Out.” Martin smiled at that, his smile impossibly wide, though his eyes shone with an emotion Jon couldn’t quite place. “You- you get to leave here. Not everybody is so lucky. Don’t look a gift door in the mouth, now.”

“Right. Of course.”

As Jon mentally weighed the pros and cons of trying to get Martin to be more specific about where the door left--perhaps it led right back to the circus, or opened at the top of a cliff, or in the middle of the Sahara Desert, or...--Martin spoke up again.

“Unless you’d like to stay and chat for a bit. I certainly wouldn’t object to a bit of company. Present company very much included.”

Jon considered for a moment whether Martin was being serious or not (was the monster seriously expecting him to hang around for some unspecified length of time in its impossible nightmare corridors just for fun?) before deciding that it didn’t really matter, because his answer was going to be the same either way.

“I think I’ll pass on that offer, thanks.”

“I figured as much.” Martin’s too-wide smile faded a little, though it still made Jon’s mouth ache just looking at it. “Better get going, then. Before I have the chance to change my mind.”

Jon shuddered at the thought as he reached for the doorknob and flung the door open; he couldn’t see much in the darkness beyond, but now as before, uncertainty still seemed preferable to certain death.

As Jon stepped forward, ready to enter the dark space before him, he heard Martin’s voice call out once more.

“One last thing.”

Jon turned his head to look back at Martin, at the distorted, warped, _wrong_ being that insisted on mimicking the form of one of his closest friends.

“What?”

The word came out sharper than intended, but Martin didn’t seem to mind, that impossible smile widening once more.

“Don’t forget to write.”

Jon scrunched his nose as he tried to figure out what the hell that meant, and why it sounded vaguely familiar, before deciding that that was one mystery that could wait for another day.

Instead of asking for clarification, Jon just took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and strode as confidently as he could manage into the dark space before him, shutting the door behind him as his eyes slowly but surely began to adjust to the lack of light.


	3. Chapter 3

As Jon’s eyes began to adapt to the darkness, as he began to make out the bare outlines of walls and furniture around him, Jon let out a sharp laugh, because what little he could see was all too familiar.

It looked like his office back in the Archives.

But Jon knew all too well that that didn’t mean it _was_ his office back in the Archives. It could all too easily be some sort of... of replica of his office, still contained within the corridors of the thing that was once Michael, meant to lull him into a false sense of normalcy before the other shoe fell, a small part of a greater trap.

Jon moved slowly and carefully towards where the door of his office should be, flipping on the light switch only once one hand was already brushing against the doorknob. It looked like a normal door, brown rather than goldenrod, with no special bronze carvings on the handle... but Jon was well aware by now of how looks could be deceiving...

He was probably just being paranoid. He knew that, really. He _knew_ it, but that didn’t actually make him feel any better, or quiet any of the worries that kept rising up in his head.

Is it still paranoia when they really are out to get you?

Well. Only one way to get some answers, and it wasn’t by standing around pondering possibility after possibility.

Jon gripped the knob tightly and flung the door open.

The light from the Archives hit him all at once, forcing him to squint at his surroundings before his eyes adjusted, a weak hiss inadvertently escaping from his lips as he took a tentative step forward. The Archives looked normal enough as well from what he could see, which was probably a good sign, though the corridors still _could_ contain a room like this, the way they twisted and turned and spiraled in defiance of all laws of physics and geography...

“Jon?”

Jon spun around until he came face to face with Melanie, which was enough to finally quiet the voice in his head that insisted all of this was an elaborate illusion by the thing that once was Michael. Spaces could be imitated, perhaps, but people... people had never seemed to be within its purview. Helen had been alone in the corridors, after all. Tim was by the time he left them, too.

“Melanie!” He hadn’t meant for his voice to contain quite as much enthusiasm as it did, but it was good to see another person--a real person, not a living mannequin or a monster wearing a humanoid form--and he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret it. If she teased him for it later, well, that would just be the price he had to pay. At least that would mean things were back to normal, more or less.

She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment on his tone directly, only saying, “Didn’t see you come in.”

“No, I... I suppose you wouldn’t have.” Jon laughed a little at that, though it was clear from the look on Melanie’s face that if it was a joke, it was only amusing one of them. Another thing to explain later, perhaps.

“You look like shit, by the way.”

“Well, excuse me for not having cleaned myself up right after my kidnapping, next time I’ll be sure to-”

Melanie held up one hand, which was enough to immediately silence Jon’s sarcastic, bitter diatribe in the making. “Hang on, you got kidnapped?”

Jon blinked a few times, annoyance giving way to confusion. “Did... did Elias not tell you? They made tapes, they were- they said they’d send them to him...”

“Who’s _they_?”

“The, the circus, Nikola Orsinov... you really don’t know?”

Melanie shook her head, dark strands of hair falling onto her face. “ _Jesus_.”

“I mean, I’m fine now anyway--well, for a certain definition of fine... I’m not currently strapped to a chair or being aggressively moisturized, at least...”

Melanie’s eyes just kept getting wider and wider as Jon spoke.

“I should, uh. Probably have a chat with you and the other assistants about what happened there. Clear a few things up.” Jon thought of the being that resembled Martin, briefly pondered what Tim’s reaction might be to seeing such a thing without warning, and shivered a little before adding, “Especially Tim. Have you seen him around?”

Melanie shrugged. “I haven’t, but that doesn’t mean he’s not in. He’s not exactly the most sociable person these days. Want me to go hunt him down?”

“Sure.”

“Got it. Stay right there.”

And in the blink on an eye, Melanie was gone.

Jon couldn’t help but think that there had been a time where Tim very much _was_ the most sociable person, at least among the archives staff. He was the funny one, the charming one, the one you couldn’t help but like. If somebody needed to be schmoozed up for information, Tim was the man for the job. The rest of them might have been varying degrees of useless in social situations, but Tim, Tim seemed like he was made for them...

Just another thing that fell to the wayside, there. Just another thing lost to the archives and the horrors that surrounded them.

If he hadn’t dragged Tim into the archives with him when he’d been promoted to Head Archivist, perhaps...

Despite Melanie’s instructions, Jon went into his office, leaving the door wide open so that he could still be easily located, and turned on his computer. There were messages there, but for once Jon wasn’t focused on them, wasn’t focused on doing his research above all else. All he really wanted to do was check the date.

It was June now, apparently.

It had been the end of April when he’d been kidnapped, and now it was June, just like that.

His time at the circus somehow felt both so much shorter and so much longer than the month and change that had actually passed in his absence.

There was... there was going to be a lot to catch up on, now, wasn’t there?

Jon sighed softly and wandered back to the spot where Melanie had told him to wait for her, picking at his fingernails and pacing back and forth partly out of boredom and aimless anxiety but partly just because he _could_ , now, because he was free to move as he liked, no longer tied to a chair with no end in sight.

(Jon winced slightly as he suddenly recalled Nikola’s claim that she had considered fixing him to the chair using nails instead of rope, that the only reason she hadn’t followed through was because she was a ‘good friend’ of Elias. Elias, who apparently hadn’t told the rest of the Institute that he’d been kidnapped in the first place. Were they secretly working together, perhaps? Did Elias _want_ the Unknowing to happen, then? How deep did all of this go?)

Melanie was gone for long enough that Jon half-expected her to return with no Tim, only a statement suggesting that he must be out for the day, but when she did return it was with Tim by her side, Melanie’s hand wrapped around his wrist in a gesture that looked more menacing than comforting.

“Found him. Despite his best efforts.”

Jon wondered for a moment what “despite his best efforts” meant in this context, wondered where exactly Tim had been hiding from him and the others... and then abruptly ended that train of thought when he realized that if he thought about it too hard, there was the possibility that he might actually _Know_ where Tim’s secret hiding spots in the Institute were, and Tim deserved to keep his secrets. He’d taken enough from Tim already.

“And Basira?”

“Still reading at her desk last I checked. Want me to grab her too?” Given the way Melanie’s grip on Tim’s arm tightened subtly but clearly at the word “grab,” Jon was half-convinced that she might well grab Basira literally rather than just metaphorically if he asked as much.

Jon thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. “It’s fine, we can go to her instead. It’s probably for the best that all of you be sitting down when I talk about this anyway.”

“ _We_ should be sitting down?” Tim let out a humorless laugh. “You look like you’re about ready to keel over any second now, boss.”

“Right. Well...” Jon glanced back towards his office. “You do have a point. Perhaps I’d better go fetch a seat for myself as well.”


	4. Chapter 4

Jon realized now as he sat in his chair facing the desks of the archival assistants, three faces with varying levels of interest staring back at him, that it had been a long time since he’d had a meeting like this with them.

Had the last time he’d met with all his archival assistants at once, on purpose, to share information, been that “intervention” Elias and the rest had arranged?

...no. No, he refused to consider that _thing_ that had taken Sasha’s place one of his assistants. By that logic, Martin, or the creature now using his name and appearance, still was as well, and _he_ wasn’t sitting here now, was he?

(Part of Jon half-expected him to turn up at just the thought of it, expected to see a goldenrod door appear out of nowhere and creak open slowly but surely; Jon wasn’t sure if he was more relieved or disappointed when one in fact failed to materialize.)

“So.” Jon clasped his hands together, twiddling his thumbs idly as he spoke. A small gesture, but one he hadn’t been able to engage in for over a month now. Sometimes the little things make all the difference. “I told Melanie this much already, but the rest of you ought to know that the reason I haven’t been in the Archives since April was because I was kidnapped.”

“Again?” Basira asked, her voice calm and flat.

“ _Again_?” Melanie echoed, her voice very much not calm; Jon hadn’t realized until now that their confrontation with Elias hadn’t actually explained the whole Daisy kidnapping him thing, though it had revealed plenty of other information along the way.

“Again, yes.” Jon said, trying to keep his voice steady as he spoke, his eyes focused more on Basira than Melanie.

“Is there a reason you had to gather us all together to tell us this, or are you just here to throw a pity party?” There was a sharp undercurrent to Tim’s voice, a vicious sarcasm that hurt Jon more than his rope burns.

“Yes, there’s a point to all of this, just give me a moment to get there-”

“Is that an occupational hazard around here, getting kidnapped?” Jon wanted to believe that Melanie was joking, but he wasn’t so sure.

“Wouldn’t surprise me at this point, given that apparently becoming a monster’s par for the course now.” Tim glared pointedly at Jon as he spoke, and much as Jon wanted to think that Tim was referring to the thing that had taken Sasha’s place, the fierceness of that glare suggested otherwise.

“No, no, I don’t think the rest of you are in danger of it, it sounded like the circus wanted me specifically, something about my skin being special-”

Tim’s hands curled into fists. “You were kidnapped by the _circus_?”

“Yes?” Jon hadn’t been expecting for that point specifically to be questioned out of everything he had to go over, all the ground he had to cover in explaining where he’d been for over a month. “The circus wanted me for their grand ritual, the, the Unknowing, they kidnapped me to be part of it-”

“What the hell is the Unknowing, and why haven’t you mentioned any of this to me sooner? Any of you, for that matter?”

“Well, you haven’t exactly been around to _tell_ -”

“I don’t want to hear it, Melanie!”

Basira just watched, leaning back in her chair as if the argument unfolding in front of her was mere idle people-watching. Perhaps it was in her book.

Jon tried and largely failed to suppress a soft, shaky laugh as he spoke up again. “This- this isn’t even the part I thought you’d be interested in!”

“Oh yeah?” Tim looked Jon right in the eye, then, and the fierceness of Tim’s gaze made Jon shiver a little. “What’s the part you _thought_ I’d be interested in, then?”

“The part where Martin showed up... well. Sort of.”

“Sort of? How did Martin ‘sort of’ show up in the middle of your circus kidnapping?”

“It’s, it’s complicated-”

“’Course it is.”

“And it, it wasn’t in the _middle_ of it, it was at the end, it’s the reason I was able to get back here in the first place-”

“Jon.” Tim stood up suddenly, pressing his hands against his desk; he couldn’t very effectively loom over Jon when his desk was several feet away from where Jon was sitting, but he certainly attempted to do so just the same. “ _What happened to Martin?_ ”

“He turned into Michael.” Jon couldn’t meet Tim’s fiery gaze, instead looking back down at his hands, fidgeting with his fingers as he spoke. “Or- or Michael turned into him. Or both. I don’t entirely understand it, but I- I think that might well be the point.”

Tim sat back down, though his arms remained atop his desk, splayed out haphazardly. “Start from the beginning.”

“Well, Michael- there’s a reason it used that name, why it looked so human. Michael Shelley was one of Gertrude’s assistants, she, she got him to enter the Distortion during its ritual, to _become_ the Distortion.”

Tim snorted. “So there’s precedent, then.”

“What, you think he’s going to sacrifice one of us next?” Melanie’s face paled slightly at the thought, though her eyes were filled with cold determination not to be the next victim.

“No, that’s not- no.” Jon shook his head roughly, trying to ignore how his hands shook at just the thought of it. “And if you’re trying to reference what happened to Sasha, that wasn’t my doing.”

“Maybe not, but you _knew_ , didn’t you? You knew before the rest of us did, and you didn’t say a damn word-”

“I was literally wanted for murder, Tim. Or did you forget that bit? Did you expect me to waltz into the Archives and just wait to get arrested? If you’re going to be mad at anyone for that, I’m pretty sure Elias knew the whole time. By all means, go yell at him for it.”

“I’m not _yelling_.” Tim slumped down in his chair. “So- so how does the Michael bit connect back to Martin?”

“Well, Michael... showed up, when I was kidnapped. To kill me. Because things weren’t bad enough already, obviously...”

Jon heard a soft snort, realized with a start that it had come from Basira; evidently she was hanging onto the conversation just fine, despite her cool and quiet demeanor that might suggest otherwise.

“I tried to open its door, but it was locked. Even Michael couldn’t open the door for me. After it tried, it... screamed and distorted before disappearing entirely, and then the door opened. And what was within it looked like Martin, a little, like Michael might have looked like Michael Shelley once did, but... wrong. The same giant hands, the same unnatural height. Whatever’s in there wants to be called Martin now, but I don’t... I don’t know how much it really _is_ him. If at all.”

Tim let out a long sigh. “Why does everybody I care about end up becoming a monster?”

Jon’s aimless fidgeting stopped as he considered the implications of that question, tried to figure out how best to answer it.

Sasha, Martin, Jon himself. All three of them had known Tim; all three of them had changed dramatically in the last year, changed due to a connection to the supernatural. It might have been comforting to know that Tim cared about Jon as much as the other two if he wasn’t being called a monster in the process.

 _Was_ he a monster? He’d asked Elias if he was still human and hadn’t gotten a straight answer, which wasn’t exactly a surprise, but what Elias had said on the subject wasn’t entirely reassuring. But even if Jon wasn’t human, that didn’t mean he was necessarily a monster, did it? Maybe he was an avatar, like Georgie had said, somewhere in between fully human and fully other...

And part of Jon, that part that was other, was perhaps monstrous, sensed that it wasn’t just the three of them that Tim was referring to. There was another story there, one that Jon wanted to know, but--but he wasn’t going to do that to Tim. Even if part of him wanted to rip out the story no matter the cost. Even if part of him relished in the thought that he _could_.

Jon had only managed a soft “Tim...” before Tim stood up, pushing his chair in and turning away from Jon.

“The three of you can keep doing... whatever this is. Decompressing, getting your precious intel, I don’t know. But I’m out of here. I’m done.”

“Tim, wait!”

Tim walked off, turned the corner and disappeared as he entered another hallway.

Jon stood up, shakily, seeing Melanie and Basira’s eyes staring up at him as he did so. There was more to tell them, more to explain about what had happened, but-

But all that could wait.

Jon hesitated for only a moment before following in Tim’s footsteps, taking the same path that Tim had, walking as fast as he could manage until he and Tim were almost side by side.


	5. Chapter 5

“Tim?”

Tim didn’t look Jon’s way, but his pace quickened and Jon struggled to keep up, his legs still stiff from over a month of being tied to a chair.

“Tim, can we talk?”

Tim snorted, though the sound had no humor to it. “Think you’ve talked enough already, boss.”

“That just means it’s your turn, then.”

Tim slowed his pace, which Jon was thankful for as his legs were starting to burn from the exertion required to keep up with him, but remained silent.

“Wh-” No. No questions. He wasn’t going to do that, not to a friend, not to _Tim_. A brief pause, as Jon figured out how to turn his question into a not-question that got across the same point. “I’m curious why the circus specifically drew your attention earlier.”

“Yeah, I bet you are.”

For a moment those words hung there, and Jon thought Tim was going to leave it at that, deny him answers, deny him even conversation. But then Tim slowed to a halt, looking Jon up and down before speaking up again.

“Thanks for not forcing the story out of me, I suppose.” His voice spoke more of bitterness and sarcasm than actual gratitude, but Jon would take it. It was still far better than nothing, at least.

Jon thought his reply through. “No problem” was too flippant, “you’re welcome” too formal and self-congratulatory. He ended up settling on, “You deserve to keep your secrets.”

Tim looked at Jon for a long moment then, and Jon wondered what, exactly, Tim saw in that moment. Did he see the rope burns, the way his legs were slightly shaking from having to move so much after over a month (a _month_ ) of near-motionless imprisonment? Did he see the dark circles under Jon’s eyes? Did he see some remnant of the Jon he’d known back in Research, or just another Archivist in the flesh now?

Jon looked at Tim in turn, saw that Tim’s hands were clenched into loose fists, but were also shaking slightly.

“...but there _is_ a story, then.”

“Yes, there’s a story, and- and you want to know all the bloody details, because of course you do, right? Fine. Fine, we can do this.”

Tim threw his hands in the air in mock surrender, but before Jon could think of a response, Tim had continued speaking.

“I ran into the circus once. They took my brother. I want them all dead and gone, and I want it done yesterday. Statement fucking ends. Are you happy now?”

Jon blinked a few times, trying not to think too hard about how, while “happy” would certainly be an overstatement, he did feel slightly better, the pain from his injuries slightly less pressing in his mind. He felt... satiated.

He felt good, and he felt good because of Tim’s pain, and he didn’t want that, didn’t want to prey on others’ misery, but not wanting it wasn’t enough to make it stop...

“I’m sorry.” Jon said, his tone soft but still loud enough that Tim should have no issue hearing it.

“Sure.” Tim tapped his foot on the floor several times before speaking again. “Tell me more about Martin. Or the thing using his name, anyway.”

“I mean...” Jon sighed, running one hand through his hair--he needed a haircut, but he wasn’t sure if he’d trust anyone to stand behind him with a knife right about now. “It looked like him, mostly. It sounded like him, mostly. But I don’t know how much that really means anymore.”

Tim nodded. Jon wondered if he, too, was thinking of Sasha, of the thing that had taken her place. Nothing had seemed off about her, after all. He’d thought that was just how Sasha was, that she’d always been exactly like that. Now he didn’t even know what the real Sasha James looked like. “But did it _seem_ like him, the real him?”

“I... I don’t know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Jon flung his arms in the air, much as the action tired him out further. “It _is_ an answer, because _I don’t know_ , Tim!”

Tim raised an eyebrow. “Thought you knew everything.”

“Well, then, you thought wrong.”

Jon took a deep breath and considered his interactions with this new “Martin,” considered what evidence he had that it was or wasn’t Martin Blackwood back from the dead, his arms slinking back down to his sides as he got lost in thought. “He- it did refer to Martin in the third person, which probably isn’t a great sign.”

“Christ.”

“But it did stumble over its words a bit, which I don’t recall Michael ever doing, and blushed when it mentioned liking me-”

Tim shot Jon a weird look then, one he couldn’t quite decipher.

“And, and got offended when I asked if he was going to kill me, even though that’s literally the whole reason Michael was there, was very insistent that he wasn’t Michael anymore...”

“So. Sounds like maybe Martin, maybe monster.”

“I suppose.” Jon leaned against a wall; God, he needed to lie down, even though it seemed odd to think that he needed rest after a month and change where he barely moved. “Maybe both.”

“Probably both, given my luck.” Tim said, softly enough that Jon wasn’t sure whether he was meant to pick up the words.

“There was one bit I wasn’t sure what Martin was getting at--though given the Distortion, maybe that, that was the point...” Jon let out a soft, humorless laugh. “Right before I came back to the Archives, it said ‘Don’t forget to write,’ and, and smiled like it was some sort of inside joke, and it probably was referencing _something_ because that doesn’t make sense taken literally but...”

Jon’s speech petered out as he noticed that Tim’s whole body was shaking, realized with a start that it was because Tim was quietly laughing to himself.

“What?” The word came out sharper than Jon had imagined, but it didn’t seem to break Tim’s sudden good mood, as he just shook his head as his laughter slowly faded.

“Nothing, just- I’m surprised a theater geek like you can’t catch a Hamilton reference that blatant, that’s all.”

Jon took a shaky step forward, away from the wall and back towards Tim. “First of all, the only person who ever calls me a theater geek is you-”

“Yeah, because you played Hamlet in uni. Don’t deny it.”

Jon sighed. “That doesn’t make me a- fine, whatever. Obviously you understood the reference then, so what does it mean?”

Tim gave Jon an odd look. “Think you should figure that one out for yourself.”

“You sound like Elias.” Jon muttered under his breath, trying to be quiet enough that Tim might not overhear; Tim did glare his way right afterwards, but Jon wasn’t positive that the two were connected.

“Any other words of wisdom you need to share, boss?”

Jon thought for a minute, then shook his head. “You can go-”

“Glad I’ve got your permission.”

“But I am glad we got to talk a bit more about... about all of this.”

Tim shrugged, a gesture that seemed calculated to be overly casual. “Don’t count on it being a regular thing or anything.”

Jon nodded, leaning against the wall once more, and this time, when Tim walked away and turned down a corner, Jon didn’t follow him.


	6. Chapter 6

Jon wasn’t quite sure how to feel when he made himself sit down and watch a bootleg version of Hamilton just to get the reference Martin (or the thing that now called itself Martin, anyway) had so casually dropped before letting him go.

“Don’t forget to write” made slightly more sense in the context of the musical, with Angelica calling out to the story’s namesake before leaving town (to go to _London_ , of all places)... but what did that mean for him, for Jon and Martin?

Were they supposed to be, like Angelica and Alexander, some sort of... of _star-crossed lovers_? Because that was... that was preposterous, obviously. Was it meant as sarcasm, since Jon himself was nearly as dedicated to his own form of writing as Hamilton himself, whether Martin told him to do it or not? Was it a replacement for some other sentiment that Angelica--that _Martin_ couldn’t quite bring himself to voice just before leaving?

Jon checked theory boards and lyric analysis online and found himself vaguely resenting that he was putting all of this research into a- a _Broadway musical_ of all things, rather than actual work, but the resentment wasn’t quite enough to get him to actually _stop_.

What would be easiest was if he could just have Martin come here and talk to him, and in the old days it would have been as simple as sticking his head outside his office door and calling Martin’s name, but these weren’t the old days anymore, and the Martin that remained wasn’t that Martin. Jon had learned well enough from dealing with Michael that the Distortion would appear only when it wanted to, for better or for worse.

Not when you call. Never when you call...

But there was only so much time Jon could spend looking into what Martin had said. He had other research to do, after all, research into things more important than a bit of interpersonal confusion, research that might well be the key to saving the world.

Even as life went on, though, Jon found his thoughts drifting to Martin every now and again.

He thought of Martin before boarding his plane to New Zealand, and before his plane to China, and to America, briefly thought each time about how much easier it would be to travel by magic supernatural door. No double- and triple-checking his packing to make sure nothing within would get confiscated by security and everything was just under the weight limit, no long lines to get into the airport proper, no “random” security checks that always managed to pick him for extra surveillance, no hours spent killing time on a plane as it traveled from place to place. It would be significantly more dangerous, of course--the thing now calling itself Martin was still by and large an unknown entity, not someone he could blindly trust--but also significantly more convenient.

Sometimes, when stuck in line or over-examining every item he packed or half-asleep on a plane, the trade-off almost seemed worth it.

Almost.

The point was moot, of course. The only way Jon would get to travel by supernatural door in the first place was if Martin offered, and he’d yet to see Martin since coming back from his kidnapping by the circus.

Jon half-expected to see Martin when he got kidnapped _again_. Which... it was rather unsettling that being kidnapped was rapidly becoming a regular life event for him, that this was the third time it had happened in a matter of months now. But Martin had freed him from his previous kidnapping, after all, and if Martin could navigate the circus without trouble, a pair of Hunters should be easy enough for him to handle.

It never happened, though. Every time Jon turned his head at the sound of a door creaking open, it turned out to be a door that had already been there opening for perfectly natural reasons. Not Martin’s door. Not Martin threatening to kill him, or offering a chance to escape.

This kidnapping, apparently, was one he would have to survive on his own.

Which he did, thankfully.

But it occurred to Jon, while half-awake on his flight back home to England, that part of him hadn’t wanted to make it out without Martin’s help, that a sizable part of him had been hoping to see Martin again, even knowing that “Martin” was more monster than man these days.

After all, who was Jon to judge?


	7. Chapter 7

“God, do I- do I _miss_ being chased? That’s depressing. No, it’s… I just miss feeling like I’m moving, like I-”

Jon’s post-statement ramblings were suddenly disrupted by the sound of knocking on his door. Jon shook his head in an attempt to clear his mind a bit before speaking up.

“Come i-”

As Jon started to speak, he noticed that the door to his office was still cracked open, that nobody was visible in the doorway beyond. A quick glance revealed that the knocking he’d heard was in fact from a different door, a door that hadn’t been there a moment ago, a distinctly _yellow_ door.

“Come in.” Jon said, his voice a bit more somber than before, as he watched Martin’s door loudly creak open.

Martin looked the same as before--still recognizable as the Martin Blackwood Jon knew so well, still visibly distorted enough to be recognizably not that Martin Blackwood after all. The top of his head nearly brushed against the ceiling of Jon’s office.

“What do you want?” Jon did try not to sound quite as annoyed as he felt, both to be disrupted mid-work in the first place (though truth be told, when _wasn’t_ he in the middle of work these days?) and to have to confront the thing that still insisted on taking the form of the archival assistant it had _eaten_ -

Alright, so he didn’t try _that_ hard not to sound annoyed. So sue him.

(It was easier for him to romanticize Martin, distortions and all, when he wasn’t face to face with him--with it?)

“Not sure.” The voice was soft, low, and slightly uncertain. It _sounded_ like Martin’s voice, the one Jon knew so well. “To talk?”

“You’re keeping his face, then.” Jon tried to make it sound nonchalant, like a simple statement of facts. Jon wasn’t sure that he succeeded.

“I am Martin.”

“ _Don’t_ pretend to be people I know. Knew.” The mask hiding Jon’s frustration and contempt was rapidly slipping off, and he couldn’t quite find it in himself to care.

“I’m not pretending!”

“You’re not Martin Blackwood.”

“I wasn’t Michael, either.”

Jon took a breath before continuing, mostly in the hopes that it would help him think straight. When it came to Martin--when it came to the _Distortion_ , he could use all the help with thinking straight that he could get. “Who do you see? When you, you look at yourself? There are mirrors in those... corridors of yours. What do you see?”

“I don’t.” The response came without hesitation, quick, simple, and matter-of-fact in tone.

“...why are you here?”

“I-I’m not... entirely sure?” Martin smiled at that, and it almost looked right, looked like one of those shaky nervous smiles he used to shoot Jon sometimes when he’d made a minor misstep in archival work. Almost. The teeth still looked slightly off, though. “I’m... having trouble. I don’t think I was meant to be Martin.”

“I’m... I don’t understand.” God, Jon had been starting to feel like he had a grasp on the world around him, finally, after Gerry’s briefing on the fears, and now... what was it about Martin, about the Distortion, that seemed to turn his understanding of the world upside-down so quickly every time they interacted?

“Neither do I.” Martin didn’t seem to have the same problem, though. He didn’t overthink his responses, apparently, though Martin still stumbled over words now and then. “Michael was... pulling away. His anger was interfering. I don’t, I don’t think I have a choice _but_ to be Martin. Self is difficult.”

Martin’s last sentence sounded bitter, but the bitterness didn’t seem directed at Jon, at least, which he supposed was better than the alternative. Besides, at least it showed _some_ emotion.

“Michael, he, uh, he, he wasn’t meant to be you, either, though, was he?”

“No.” Another reply both unutterably simple and yet devastatingly complicated.

Jon wanted so badly to ask more questions, to ask why this case was different then, what the problem was with it being Martin if being Michael hadn’t been a problem, but he also knew he had to pick his questions carefully, knew that asking the Distortion about itself, trying to figure the Distortion out, was just fighting a losing battle...

Another question, then. One less directly focused on the identity of the being before him.

“...so...” Jon drew his speech out, enunciating each word as clearly as he could, trying to put what power he could into then. “ _Why are you here_?”

“...I took someone.” Martin curling in on itself, on doing everything in his power to seem as small and nonthreatening as possible despite himself, was a familiar enough gesture at least, though Jon wasn’t sure he’d seen it carried out to quite this extent before; besides, it was one thing for a person to do it when they reached about six feet, and it was entirely another to act ashamed and try to hide one’s height when that height reached... nine feet? Ten, perhaps? It was impossible for this Martin to hide himself, to look small and innocuous, and any attempt at doing the same only served to highlight that impossibility.

“You t- wh... l-like Michael ate you?”

“I took a man, wandering the halls of an old tenement. He’s dead now, he never even came _close_ to finding me. It was nourishing, but...”

“ _But_?” Jon’s voice was a bit harsher than it probably needed to be, a bit sharper, but right in that moment, he didn’t mind it in the slightest.

“I didn’t _like_ it.”

“You d-” Jon let out a long sigh, tried to make his voice a bit less hostile. He wasn’t sure what he wanted his relationship with- with _Martin_ to be, now, but he wasn’t entirely aiming for “hostile.” Not _entirely_. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“I feel... _wrong_... I feel this-”

“Why are you telling me this?” Jon wasn’t calm and collected this time, wasn’t trying to carefully draw an answer out with his powers, wasn’t sure he’d understand any answer he got if he did. It just... it didn’t make sense, not even by the Distortion’s standards, not even the sense-not-sense that permeated its very being.

“Something happened when I became Martin. He wasn’t right, he wasn’t ready.”

“I don’t...” Jon let the sentence trail off as Martin started to speak again; the meaning of his half-finished statement was clear enough, he figured, even if the situation that prompted it was far from it.

“ _Before_ , talking to you made Martin feel better.”

“You’re not-” Jon paused, shifted gears, a shaky laugh emerging as the meaning of Martin’s claims actually set in. “No, it didn’t. It really didn’t.”

Martin put its too-large hands on its hips. “Excuse me?”

“I... I know Martin better than that, know how we talked to each other better than that. And I am, in fact, self-aware enough to know that...” Jon let out a low sigh. “...that how I talked to him can’t have helped his mood any, and you won’t be convincing me otherwise.”

“You weren’t nice to him, no, but...” Martin sucked in a breath through its teeth, a gesture that was painfully, annoyingly _Martin_. “Martin still liked to hear you. It’s all rather complicated, really.”

“I’m sure it was, but unless you care to actually explain the kind of ‘complication’ that might get Martin of all people to seek me out for some sort of, of _comfort_ or-”

Jon’s voice rose with every word he spoke, but he barely noticed his steady increase in volume until his speech was disrupted by the soft but clear sound of a door creaking open--not the yellow door that Martin was still standing in front of, but the ordinary brown door leading from Jon’s office to the archives, the door he had thoughtlessly left cracked open.

Jon hadn’t been sure who (what?) he’d expected to see in the doorway when he glanced open, but he certainly hadn’t been expecting Tim to be standing there, shooting Martin a wide-eyed stare, his hands shaking violently as they clutched the metal doorknob as if for dear life.

Martin’s own eyes widened at the sight, as did his smile, growing into one that made Jon’s mouth ache just looking at it.

“Hello, Tim. Fancy seeing you here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much of this is taken from dialogue in Episode 115, but it definite diverges by the chapter's end ;)  
> Side note, since this is the first update since 187:  
> In this AU, Martin's more like Michael, who is both Michael Shelley and the Distortion (and yet neither at the same time), than Helen, his canonical counterpart, who is apparently just the Distortion wearing Helen's likeness for its own ends. I could go into why, but it all sums up to: it's my AU and I get to decide the details.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, consider following me on tumblr at [haberdashing](https://haberdashing.tumblr.com/)!


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